Letters to the editor

Effects of news

As adults, we depend on “the news” as our primary source for information about the world we live in.

Whether it’s the local paper, nightly TV newscasts, cable news, news radio, or Web sites, graphic footage and accounts of the latest happenings in the world are being delivered right into our homes 24 hours a day. The constant barrage can be especially confusing and frightening for many children.

Used properly, the news can teach children many positive things about the world. Knowledge and understanding of news events can teach kids a sense of belonging and social responsibility.

Many elementary school teachers require kids to follow certain news stories for weekly current events lessons. Additionally, many literacy programs encourage parents and kids to read the newspaper together to develop language skills and healthy reading habits.

At the same time, the daily news can perpetuate stereotypes, confuse, anger and even frighten children. By talking with our kids early and often, we can help them better understand the world around them.

Sexual harassment, molestation, and rape can occur in any neighborhood. The offender can be of any age, race, sex or economic level. In most cases, the offender is not a stranger, but a relative or acquaintance of the family. If you have children, read suggestions on how to brooch this issue with them at http://bit.ly/2zTFcEO

Gordon Clay

Brookings

Funding health

The success of Measure 101 on Tuesday’s ballot was encouraging proof that Oregonians care about each other, and especially that they care about the most vulnerable members of our communities.

In voting to pass Measure 101, voters protected health care coverage for Oregon’s children, seniors, people with disabilities and many working families.

Oregon voters deserve a big round of thanks for getting out and voting to pass this important measure. Its passage will help stabilize health care costs for all Oregonians, even those who purchase their own health care insurance. And, it gives Oregon access to vital federal matching funds for Medicaid programs.

Health care is a fundamental human right, and it was encouraging to see so many voters right here in Curry County step up to support Measure 101 and vote to make health care more accessible to all Oregonians.

Thank you to all who voted yes on Tuesday.

Linda Bozack

Brookings

Plowing us under

Camel’s nose under the tent, as the saying goes. Cicero put it eloquently: “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious but it cannot survive treason from within.”

Treason and sedition are evil siblings. The words are usually warm and fuzzy. They sound kind and friendly. Take the words indivisible, welcoming, inclusive, sanctuary — wow, you will be living in an utopian society.

However, the words are conniving, lying and deceitful. The person behind the treasonous curtain intends to destroy America, tear the Constitution asunder, allow the ne’er-do-well criminal aliens access to free health care and a plethora of free services, thereby leaving America in shambles. Can your lying eyes see what is happening in Sweden?

Dennis Triglia submitted Resolution 17-R-1122 on Oct. 9, 2017. It was shelved as there was no second. The resolution stated that Brookings is a welcoming and inclusive city that respects all residents regardless of immigration or refugee status. The sanctuary camel’s body just slithered under the tent.

Sanctuary cities and states become lawless jurisdictions within the U.S. Murder, rape, stealing — you name it — anything is permitted. The Constitution is squashed by theweight of the camel’s body.

Why is Triglia a councilman? Is he protecting our Constitutional rights or plowing our rights under the name of sanctuary city?

Jean Soderman

Brookings

Reconsider

This is in response to the Jan. 23 article reporting on a meeting of the Curry Wildfire Prevention Group.

Statements presumed to be fact at that meeting were not facts at all. Referring to the Chetco Bar, Biscuit and Silver Fires, it was reported “74 percent of Curry County has been burned in those fires.” The three fires actually burned 26 percent of the county, and only 16 percent at high severity. Let’s get the facts right before we base conclusions on them.

More troubling, complex questions of resource management are easily reduced to preconceived opinions. It’s not the blackened dead snags that pose the greatest risk of future fires but rather the dense second-growth plantations and undergrowth that have replaced the mature and fire-resistant forests of the pre-logging past.

Analysis from OSU foresters after the Biscuit Fire found areas logged following the earlier Silver Fire re-burned at greater severity than unlogged areas by up to 61 percent.

Let’s just be clear: the case for increased salvage logging has nothing to do with curtailing future fires and boosting public safety.

The (U.S.) Forest Service’s recommendation to immediately log an area eight times the size of Gold Beach seeks a balance between the physical limitations and the opportunity to cut burned trees. To arbitrarily say that’s not enough — and to make that claim in the name of wildfire prevention — strays far from sensible management or informed common sense.

Tim Palmer

Port Orford

must consider

The Jan. 25 piece about the wastewater pipeline to the proposed golf course north of Port Orford got a crucial fact wrong.

The writer stated that “part of the CUP says work must begin within a year or an extension must be granted.” No. Condition number one says that the permit is valid for one year, unless the applicant applies for and receives an extension. They did not do so.

Now their attorney is trying to deflect attention from that failure by referring to a county ordinance that doesn’t apply. Whether clearing gorse constitutes work on the project or not is irrelevant.

What the developer’s attorney wasn’t saying about the gorse clearance is that it included wetlands. This is shown in the applicant’s own photographs submitted to the planning commission. The Department of State Lands confirmed that a wetland delineation (required before any work is done) was never submitted. This violates another condition (number 11) of the golf course permit.

These are two of the legal issues that the board of commissioners must consider in hearing the applicant’s appeal of the planning commission denial.

Virtually all of those who testified at the hearing in favor of the pipeline missed the point that rules and laws matter. The value of bioswales, speculative economic benefits from a golf course and current wastewater systems on the coast are not issues that can figure into the BOC’s decision.